is there anything available that could convert an audio signal into a series of oric-compatible music/sound/play statements or similar?

There's plenty of tools for graphics (e.g pictconv etc) that does the same thing for graphic images but has anyone done this for sound?

I'm thinking that first, the sound must be converted to a series of notes (the number of channels determined by the user). After conversion, a "compression" routine would run that would detect "loops" (areas of repetitition - probably the hardest part?).

After that, each channel could be assigned an "instrument"/SFX and much fun could be add with adjusting these to suit.

This is not an impossible task, but the needed process time is, I think not the worth of it. Converting a music sample to a music sheet is not currently a perfect process, and the more the music line is complex (ie multiple tracks) the more the process will be difficult. Same for the different instruments.

As I say, it's not an impossible task, but it wil be difficult to implement.

Fabrice wrote a MIDI player for the Oric (with some demo songs). It is a bit restrictive and definitely a bit complex, as it is interpreting MIDI files which need to be in memory.

If you are thinking on writting the music for the Viking Chess game, this is what I always do.

Try to find a score of the song. Better for a single instrument or similar (piano, for instance). That is the easiest way. You get the notes. Else use some software to extract the notes from a midi, but be warned it is not easy to follow and extract what you need.

I will assume you are somewhat familiar with trackers from now on. I am not, but was able to use WAVE, so you can too

If you want to use WAVE, then check the maximum number of notes you need in a compass. Imagine you see in the score that you have 8 different notes in a compass in a portion of the song. That is the base for the patterns.

Prepare some instruments on WAVE, with ornaments and such, so you get the basic effects you want in your notes (bass, drums, ...) and start entering the notes. Pay attention on the portions that repeat, as you will want to set them in a single separated pattern. Beware that a pattern includes the three channels. You cannot indicate that a portion of a channel repeats throughout the song, while the tune plays in another channel

From there it is all a matter of arranging, cleaning and experimenting.

It is not easy at all, but kind of rewarding when you get something usable!

If you don't want to use WAVE, then the list of notes could be stored as data and a very simple player could be used to play it.